Newsonline reports that the Taliban has declared the war in Afghanistan over after its fighters swept into the capital, Kabul, and President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.
Victorious Taliban fighters patrolled the streets of Kabul on Monday as thousands of Afghans mobbed the city’s airport trying to flee the group’s feared hardline brand of rule.
Meanwhile, many nations were scrambling to evacuate their diplomats, citizens and some local Afghan staff.
Al Jazeera’s Charlotte Bellis, reporting from Kabul, says “the airport has been the real crisis point of the roll-in of the Taliban”.
“Outside of that it has been relatively smooth. Security forces have for the most part laid down their weapons,” she says.
Mohammad Naeem, a spokesman for Taliban’s political office tells Al Jazeera the group does not want to live in isolation and says the type and form of the new government in Afghanistan will be made clear soon. He also calls for peaceful international relations.
The United Nations Security Council will discuss the situation in Afghanistan later on Monday.
Here are all the latest updates:
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi calls for national reconciliation in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The official IRNA news agency quotes Raisi as saying Iran will support efforts to restore stability in Afghanistan as a first priority.
He calls Iran “a brother and neighbouring nation” to Afghanistan.
He also describes the Americans’ rapid pullout as a “military failure” that should “turn to an opportunity for restoring life, security and stable peace”.
Taliban fighters in the Afghan capital, Kabul, start collecting weapons from civilians because people no longer need them for personal protection, a Taliban official says.
“We understand people kept weapons for personal safety. They can now feel safe. We are not here to harm innocent civilians,” the official tells Reuters news agency.
City resident Saad Mohseni, director of the MOBY group media company, says on Twitter that Taliban soldiers have come to his company compound to enquire about the weapons kept by his security team.
Albania and Kosovo have accepted a US request to temporarily take in Afghan refugees seeking visas to enter the US, the country two countries say.
In Tirana, Prime Minister Edi Rama Rama says US President Joe Biden’s administration has asked fellow NATO member Albania to assess whether it could serve as a transit country for a number of Afghan refugees whose final destination is the US.
“We will not say ‘No’, not just because our great allies ask us to, but because we are Albania,” Rama says on Facebook.
In Kosovo, President Vjosa Osmani says the government had been in contact with the US authorities about housing Afghan refugees since mid-July.
“Without any hesitation and … conditioning I gave my consent to that humanitarian operation,” Osmani says on her Facebook account.
Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan’s foreign minister, is meeting with a delegation of Afghan political leaders who arrived on Sunday in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.
“The Foreign Minister underlined that the region could not afford continued instability in Afghanistan which would impact negatively the objective of a peaceful and connected region,” says a Pakistani foreign ministry statement.
“He added that international community’s continued engagement in the efforts for durable peace and stability in Afghanistan would be important as it was a shared responsibility.”
The delegation includes lower house of parliament speaker Mir Rehman Rehmani, Salahuddin Rabbani, Mohammad Yunus Qanooni, Mohammad Karim Khalili, Ahmad Zia Massoud, Ahmad Wali Massoud, Abdul Latif Pedram, Khalid Noor, and Mohammad Mohaqiq, Pakistan’s special envoy to Afghanistan Muhammad Sadiq says.
The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan is a “failure of the international community”, Britain’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace says, assessing that the West’s intervention was a job only half-done.
“All of us know that Afghanistan is not finished. It’s an unfinished problem for the world and the world needs to help it,” he tells BBC television.
China says it is willing to develop “friendly relations” with the Taliban after the armed group seize control of Afghanistan.
“China respects the right of the Afghan people to independently determine their own destiny and is willing to continue to develop … friendly and cooperative relations with Afghanistan,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying tells reporters.
Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Torkham, the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, says the Taliban has taken over the border creating a disruption in the flow of cargo traffic to Pakistan.
“This is a major logistical supply line to Afghanistan. This morning we have been seeing Afghan trucks laden with cucumber, grapes and melons being crossing into Pakistan,” he says.
“However, on the Pakistan side, the traffic that is supposed to be moving into Afghanistan, carrying meat, poultry and other commodities is stuck here because of the backlog and a border closure yesterday.”
The European Union is working with member states to find quick solutions for the relocation of local Afghan staff and their families to a safe place, a spokesperson says.
“The matter is extremely urgent, we take it very seriously and continue to work hard, together with EU member states, on implementing rapid solutions for them and ensure their safety,” the spokesperson for the bloc’s executive Commission tells Reuters news agency.
The Commission does not give figures for their local Afghan staff for security reasons.
Russia will evacuate some of its Afghanistan embassy’s roughly 100 staff, Zamir Kabulov, President Vladimir Putin’s special representative on Afghanistan, tells the Ekho Moskvy radio station.
The official also says that Russia’s ambassador in Afghanistan will meet with a Taliban representative on Tuesday and discuss security for its diplomatic mission there, the Interfax news agency reports.
At least five people have been killed in Kabul airport as hundreds of people tried to forcibly enter planes leaving the Afghan capital, witnesses tell Reuters news agency.
One witness says he has seen the bodies of five people being taken to a vehicle. Another witness says it is not clear whether the victims have been killed by gunshots or in a stampede.
US troops, who are in charge of the airport, earlier fired in the air to scatter the crowd, a US official says.
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A Taliban leader tells Reuters news agency the Taliban fighters are regrouping from different provinces, and will wait until foreign forces had left before creating a new governance structure.
The leader, who requested anonymity, says Taliban fighters had been “ordered to allow Afghans to resume daily activities and do nothing to scare civilians”.
“Normal life will continue in a much better way, that’s all I can say for now,” he tells Reuters in a message.
Nepal’s government calls for the evacuation of an estimated 1,500 Nepalis working as security staff with embassies and with international aid groups in Afghanistan.
“We have formally written to embassies requesting them for the evacuation,” Nepal Foreign Ministry spokesperson Sewa Lamsal tells Reuters news agency in Kathmandu.
Lamsal says the government has also set up a panel to determine the exact number of Nepalis working in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan.
“The government will make arrangements for their evacuation also,” she says.
Nepal does not have a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan but thousands of Nepali men work as security guards in diplomatic districts of the country.
The Taliban armed group is in control of Afghanistan and British forces are not going to return to fight them, the United Kingdom’s defence minister says.
“I acknowledge that the Taliban are in control of the country,” Defence Secretary Ben Wallace tells Sky News. “I mean, you don’t have to be a political scientist to spot that’s where we’re at.”
Asked if Britain and NATO would return to Afghanistan, Wallace says: “That’s not on the cards … we’re not going to go back.”
Afghanistan Civil Aviation Authority (ACAA) says that Kabul airspace have been released to the military and it advises transit aircraft to reroute, according to a notice to airmen on its website.
ACAA says any transit through Kabul airspace will be uncontrolled and it has advised the surrounding flight information regions that control airspace.
Kabul’s flight information region covers all of Afghanistan.
Commercial flights from Kabul are cancelled after chaotic scenes at the airport with thousands looking for a way out after the Taliban re-took power in Afghanistan.
“There will be no commercial flights from Hamid Karzai Airport to prevent looting and plundering. Please do not rush to the airport,” the Kabul airport authority says in a message sent to reporters.
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